... coward ....

I don't know of the man. Robert Spencer calls him "MSNBC's Senior Political Analyst and a panelist on 'The McLaughlin Group.' "

Hot Air describes him as "one of the MSM's prominent pundits.That pundit is Larry O'Donnell, who was last seen going nuts on Mormons . O'Donnell appeared on the Hugh Hewitt show yesterday and over the course of the conversation, made this admission."

Larry O'Donnell admits he's afraid to criticize Islam publicly

posted at 2:03 pm on December 11, 2007 by Bryan

HH: Would you say the same things about Mohammed as you just said about Joseph Smith?

LO'D: Oh, well, I'm afraid of what the…that's where I'm really afraid. I would like to criticize Islam much more than I do publicly, but I'm afraid for my life if I do.

HH: Well, that's candid.

LO'D: Mormons are the nicest people in the world. They're not going to ever…

HH: So you can be bigoted towards Mormons, because they'll just send you a strudel.

LO'D: They'll never take a shot at me. Those other people, I'm not going to say a word about them.

HH: They'll send you a strudel. The Mormons will bake you a cake and be nice to you.

LO'D: I agree.

HH: Lawrence O'Donnell, I appreciate your candor.
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/12/11/larry-odonnell-admits-hes-afraid-to-criticize-islam-publicly/

OK, I'll admit I don't know of this guy. Neither do I have any idea why he would say the things he said. He says he's a coward. I can understand that a guy might make some kind of joke like that. I night say something about myself like that in reference to my girlfriend or my cat or about opening the fridge door after being on the road for a week. But Islam? I don't get it.

I'm like anyone else in that I avoid pain wherever and whenever possible. I avoid pain if I can, and if I can't I endure it as well as I'm able. Sometimes I can't endure it and I scream and thrash around. I don't get ashamed of it. Pain is pain because it hurts. That's the reality of living in a material world. That which does not kill me makes me crippled and bitter. Then I move on and live my life knowing that sometime it will end. I understand and accept all that. This other guy? Lawrence O'Donnell, Jr.? There, folks, I'm not getting it. I understand this guy as well as I understand a spider on the wall in the toilet. I read the copy above but I don't get it. I think he's saying he's afraid of Muslims who might hurt him if he says things about them they don't like. Yeah? So? If someone is threatening the guy, he should address that person. If a group of unknown people are threatening him, he should seek out those under the same threat and make a group of his own and attack those likely to attack him. Reader, what kind of person are you? Can you begin to comprehend a coward? I'm utterly baffled.

To cleanse my soul of the foulness of Mr. O'Donnell, I present this, years old now:

There's more to war than killing the enemy. It comes down to what kind of man you are. Look at mine:

http://www.clan-cameron.org/battles/1544.html

and compare the beauty of them to the beauty of another kind of man involved in war:

http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1901/dunant-bio.html

I don't know if those links turned out right, so I'll summarize a bit.

Mine fought the Battle of the Shirts. They met in the morning, swung their claymores till the heat was too much, and then they took off their kilts and fought in their shirts till there were a few exhausted men left alive on either side, men too tired to finish killing each other.

There's a difference between a soldier and a warrior. The latter is out to kill and die, not for "a" cause but "be"cause. Mine were heroes. They were thieves and drunkards and bullies and cringeing cowards in the face of the clan chief; but in the fields and the glens and in the tors they were men who fought and killed and screamed and bled and died. They were mad-men who fought.

When the English slaughtered mine at Culloden and cleared the Highlands to graze sheep and destroy the land, well, I could scream and bellow and want to wreak havok on the English for it; but I look at the damage done, and I thank God for it: I was fortunate enough because of that to live my life, not on a barren wasteland scrambling from groats and haggis, but as an American.

Mine were fighting men, and they died like men, beautiful and fantastic and brave. The children, some of them, the fortunate, who survived went on to America and became Americans. Thank God for it.

As good as mine are they didn't raise up among them Henry Dunant, and they didn't live his hard life. That man was a hero, too, a man deeply involved in war. His war won't ever end, and the suffering will never cease.

And what about us? We have the best of both in us,
the maniac killers who fight for the blood of man and a place at the hand of God; and we are those who will tend our fellows in spite of the grief and the pain we suffer for it. We are, as I've written here many times before, blessed by living in this time when we can take the fight to the world of evil and conquer it for the Good. Crazed and savage though we might be in battle we have also in us the Humanity lacking in the majority of the world's population. We are able to crush our enemies totally, and we have the duty to do so to bring to them the hope of Humaness they now lack. what could be better in life?

Ha Zahal, the IDF, they fight for Israel, and rightly so. But we can fight for the whole world. It really doesn't get much better. And if at the end of the day there are few of us left standing, then maybe some beggar will come to tend us and take us back to our wives and babies so we can all be Americans in peace till the next time.

****

The piece above is the last of three, the first two of which I'll present here in sequence for the record.

We mostly scoff at "arm-chair warriors," sloughing them off as day-dreamers and fools. We read of the brave exploits they would perform if only they could. I'd like to look briefly at those who are out of the arm-chair and in the position to act, who are required to act.

Knowing where bin Laden is will not do us any good at all unless we have men and women who will take it upon themselves to rid us of that beast. And who will those men and women be? Not you or I, I'm sorry to say. Those who will act will be the few of the few. Aside from my anecdotal experiences which back up the following, I'll rely here on the published work of Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing. London: Granta, 1999. For further information on this topic one may go to google for "Killology."

Most soldiers do not kill their enemies. They don't generally even fire their weapons.

"...no matter how thourough the training, it still failed to enable most combatants to fight. During the First World War, it was commonly believed that only 10 per cent of soldiers could be called brave and many military commentators deplored the 'live and let live' principle. [p.73.]

During the Second World War,... no more than 15 per cent of men had actually fired at enemy positions or personnel...it would have been possible for 80 per cent of the men to have fired and nearly all men were (at some stage) within firing distance of the enemy. To be counted as a 'firer,' a man would only have had to fire his weapon or lob a grenade 'roughly in the direction of the enemy' once or twice." [p.75.]

For all the writing back and forth here about how we are or are not violent and fascistic and hatefilled, when the crunch comes, few if any of us would act any differently in the face of our enemies than did soldiers in WWL, WW2, and the war in Viet Nam, as covered in the book above.

What does this say about us as anti-jihadists? I'll venture that of the 15 per cent of us who think of ourselves as badass guys only 15 per cent of those would ever pull the trigger on bin Laden. and ask yourselves just how many rounds would actually hit the man? We leave these things to professionals for good reason: most of us couldn't shoot a man face-to-face if he were shooting at us.

"Marshall found that there were some men who identified targets yet did not shoot, and there were other men who were under attack yet did not attempt to use the weapons to retaliate or in self protection. Furthermore, passive troops were not 'green' troops." [p. 76.]

The most remarkable thing about the IDF wasn't their professionalism, which most Western soldiers possess to the nth degree, it was their ability to remain Human in the midst of war, to kill the enemy without devolving into animal hatred even in the smoke and shock of battle. The enemy, on the other hand, were indistinguishable for maniacs crazzed and screaming, one going so far as to rush head-long into a burning building in search of a phantom. I'm sorry to admit that I'm the only one who laughed.

All the violent words that splash down these columns are so much nothing. There might be a will to triumph over our enemies but it's passive. That's not a condemnation of our readers. We do not want to be soldiers in the field. If we were, chances are we would not fire our weapons at men who are much like us. That's nothing to be ashamed of.

"The passive 75 per cent of men would generally remain passive. But...even those soldiers who did not fire were crucial to the battle: their presence was essential for morale. Active combatants were too busy fighting to notice what their comrades were (or were not) doing. In fact, it was the presence of passive soldiers which enabled active soldiers to continue fighting. They contributed thier weight to the mass of the attack, even if they contributed little to its velocity." [p.87.]

What is the serious objection to killing an individual in a crowd, Yassin, for example? The message is clear and precise. One man is responsible fror his actions, and that man is dead. Our opponents would set off a car bomb, killing at random, and call it good. Allah is responsible for that action, and the group understands the irrationality of it in its own terms. Our experience in Jugoslavia is contrary: we fired laser-guided missles from the ether. The average Serb has to this day no idea why that happened. Jets were long past the target before they were seen, and then the fires were raging long since. That speck brought death! There was no sense of who did that or why, because one cannot hate a speck, only an idea one might associate with that speck. And since there is no way to fight a speck it isn't a defeat no matter how badly one is beaten, for no speck is viable as an enemy. It has no meaning whatsoever. The science of war loses wars because there is no art to war by machines, and there is therefore no enemy to lose to.

If we are to win any war against any enemy, we must have men on the ground, face to face with our enemies so they can see us and fight us man to man till one man is still standing. We will not win any war until the enemy is in the dust begging not for mercy but crying out "I am you!" When that defeated man sees my face and knows I'm the better man, then he will not be defeated but he will be my ally. When I beat a man who beats a woman I must beat him till he beats men who beat women. He will do that when he is me and mine. I cannot make him one of mine from inside a tank. I can do that by beating him man to man so he knows who I am and what I do. Killing a murderer doesn't make me a murderer, it makes his survivors moral.

Who among us will take up arms and fight man to man against bin Laden? Who will run the man down and kill him face to face? Who will stand with bin Laden's head in hand and say: "Now you work for me!"

I'll retire to my armchair to wheeze and read of imaginable glories, to dream of William Walker and his Immortal Filibusters who could have made the world America.

****

Look at the Moslem world: bin Laden hides in a rock pile and we read of Epaminondes.They fetishize Mohammed while we rejoice in the wisdom of Solon. Taliban and Caliban. Aisha and Catherine. Zarqawi and Jabotinski. Hamas and Zahal. Kaba and Kotel.

Yes, the Moslems love their own filth as much as we admire our heroes and our great symbols and centers of Good. Islam is not a religion of peace, nor are we going to live in peace with its adherents. We choose our side, or by not choosing we decide anyway. Regardless, the sides are divided, and it's up to us to make our moves. And not a one of us in a million has chosen a side based on inductive reasoning and rational discourse.

Let us, with Georges Sorel, reflect on violence: We move according to "myth." If my myth is greater in violence than is the force of the myth of Islam, then I will succeed. Our vision of triumph is our myth. The Myth of American Triumphalism.

We need, writes Sorel, a "...body of images which, by intuition alone, and before any considered analyses are made, is capable of evoking as an undivided whole the mass of sentiments which corresponds to the different manifestations of the war undertaken by progressive Humanity against Islam and dhimmitude. By concentrating [o]n the drama there is no longer any place for the reconcilliation of equivocations; everything is clearly mapped out, only one interpretation is possible [with] all the advantages which 'integral' knowledge has over analysis....

The Myth must be judged as a means of acting on the present....It is the Myth in its entirity which is alone important..... The question whether the Myth is a partial reality, or only a product of popular imagination, is of little importance. All that is necessary to know is whether the Myth contains everything our Myth expects of us. To solve this question we are no longer compelled to argue learnedly about the future; we are not obliged to indulge in lofty reflections about philosophy, history, or economics; we are not on the plane of theories, and we can remain on the level of observable facts.

[Our Myth is] a body of images capable of evoking instinctively all the sentiments which correspond to the different manifestations of the war we've undertaken against Islam and dhimmitude."

KJ, Kemaste, Kepha: We are our Myth. Our mythlogos does not include Islam or dhimmitude. We are as irrationally Baconian as we are irrationally Christian or Jewish or Hindu. Our Socratic Myth is irrational. Only the Violence of our Myth needs to be rational. When we celebrate the irrationality of our Myth our Violence will prevail over the Force of Islam and dhimmitude. Ours is the Will, the Myth, and the Violence.

Again and again I have urged the adoption of the 'phaze-shift" symbol and the reification of our party. Today I urge the adoption of the Myth of our Triumphalism. Embrace foundationalism-- elenchus and aporia-- and abandon the relativism of the dhimmis and the Left defeatists. Organize around the Myth as the vanguard of the party to come.

What Myth? Our Myth. Socrates and William Walker. The sword and the hammer, the gun and the pen.

Every man on every block is a seed of the Myth. Every block has a woman who bears the fruit of the Myth in our midst. We know what we know, and we need know little more. We have only to embrace the Violence against the Force to ensure that the Will of the Myth is triumphant.

9/11. Beslan. We know Islam. We know our Myth. We know our destiny. We begin to know our Path.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/006156.php

****